McAfee
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| McAfee, Inc. | |
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| Type | Public (NYSE: MFE) |
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| Founded | 1987 |
| Headquarters |  Santa Clara, California, USA |
| Key people | John McAfee, founder Dale L. Fuller, Interim CEO |
| Industry | Computer software |
| Revenue |  US$1.06 billion (2006) |
| Employees | 3,290 (2005) |
| Website | www.mcafee.com |
McAfee, Inc. (pronounced MAK-uh-FEE) is an antivirus and computer security company headquartered in Santa Clara, California. It markets McAfee VirusScan and related security products and services, including the IntruShield, Entercept, and Foundstone brands.
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[edit] History
The company was founded in 1989 as McAfee Associates, named for its founder John McAfee. Whilst McAfee had a lot of market share in the US their sales in Europe was minimal. Network Associates was formed in 1997 as a merger of McAfee Associates and Network General which gave them a large installed based in Europe. A merger with Dr Solomon's Software (formerly S&S International) in August 1997 gave them a comprehensive R&D lab in Aylesbury, UK and importantly access to the 'Olympus' Anti-Virus engine, one of the best and which still remains in the current product (5100 engine). In the year 2004, a major restructuring occurred. In the spring, the company sold the Magic Solutions business to Remedy, a subsidiary of BMC Software. In the summer of 2004, the company sold the Sniffer Technologies business to a venture capital backed firm named 'Network General' - the same name as the original owner of Sniffer Technologies. Also, the company changed its name to McAfee to reflect its focus on security-related technologies.
Among other companies bought and sold by McAfee (formerly known as Network Associates) is Trusted Information Systems, which developed the Firewall Toolkit, which was the free software foundation for the commercial Gauntlet Firewall, which was later sold by McAfee to Secure Computing Corporation. Network Associates, as a result of brief ownership of TIS Labs/NAI Labs/Network Associates Laboratories/McAfee Research, was highly influential in the world of Open Source software, as that organization produced portions of the Linux, FreeBSD, and Darwin operating systems, developed portions of the BIND name server software, as well as SNMP version 3.
Leading up to the TIS Labs acquisition, McAfee had acquired Calgary, Canada-based FSA Corporation, which helped the company diversify its security offerings away from just client-based antivirus software by bringing on board its own network and desktop encryption technologies. The FSA team also oversaw the creation of a number of other technologies that were leading edge at the time, including firewall, file encryption, and public key infrastructure product lines. While those product lines had their own individual successes including PowerBroker written by Dean Huxley and Dan Freedman and now sold by Symark Software), the growth of antivirus always outpaced the growth of the other security product lines. It is fair to say that the company remains best known for antivirus and antispam product lines.
On April 2, 2003, McAfee acquired IntruVert Networks for $100 million in cash. According to Network World, "IntruVert's technology focus is on intrusion-prevention, which entails not just detecting attacks, but blocking them. The IntruVert product line can be used as a passive intrusion-detection system, just watching and reporting, or it can be used in the intrusion-prevention mode of blocking a perceived attack." [1]
On April 5, 2006, McAfee bought out SiteAdvisor for a reputed $57m in competition with Symantec, a service that warns users if downloading software or filling out forms on a site may obtain malware or spam. In January 2006, McAfee agreed to pay a fine of US$50 million to the SEC for a practice known as channel stuffing that served to inflate their revenue to their investors.
McAfee prefer to bundle their offerings together, the most recent being McAfee Total Protection. McAfee Total Protection is the new security suite, containing all of the McAfee security tools, It is meant to compete with Symantec's Norton 360 and Microsoft's Windows OneCare. They debuted alongside an updated Internet Security Suite.
In October 2006 McAfee fired their President Kevin Weiss and their CEO George Samaneuk resigned under the cloud of a recent SEC investigation which also caused the departure of Kent Roberts the General Council earlier in the year. In late December 2006 both Weiss and Samaneuk had share option grant prices revised upwards by McAfee's board.
In January 2007 Under pressure from ex-employees worldwide, several of which backed a class action in the US McAfee agreed to honor share options granted but which are not able to be exercised due to the self imposed employee options dealing blackout.
On March 5, 2007 McAfee named Dave DeWalt chief executive and president. He has replaced interim CEO Dale Fuller. Fuller will remain on McAfee's Board. DeWalt is expected to be named to the board of McAfee. [2]
[edit] Products
McAfee currently develops many security tools for the PC, both for corporate and home users, including:
- McAfee VirusScan (antivirus, some antispyware components)
- McAfee Total Protection for Small Business (antivirus, antispyware, firewall)
- McAfee Personal Firewall Plus (firewall)
- McAfee SpamKiller (antispam)
- McAfee Privacy Service (anti-abuse, plus Anti-phishing)
- McAfee AntiSpyware (full antispyware, plus Anti-phishing)
- McAfee QuickClean (secure shredder, file cleanup)
- McAfee SiteAdvisor (free) (alerts users when entering dangerous sites, basing on downloads, popups and number of e-mail received)
- McAfee SecurityCenter (free) (gateway to managing most McAfee services, as well as Windows updates management)
- McAfee LinuxShield (antivirus for enterprise editions of Redhat and SUSE distributions.)
- McAfee Wireless Security protects wireless networks.
- McAfee IntruShield (Intrusion Prevention Appliance)
[edit] Product support
McAfee Virtual Technician provides automatic diagnosis and problem resolution for McAfee products.This tool can be accessed from http://mvt.mcafee.com/mvt/default.htm.
[edit] Naming rights
McAfee has had naming rights to the McAfee Coliseum, home of the Oakland Athletics baseball team in Oakland, California since 1997 when then-Network Associates acquired sponsorship to the venue formerly called the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum.
